Nintendo: we'll sell 35 million Wiis in USA

But analyst says it's too early to tell

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Nintendo will sell 35 million Wii consoles in the USA by 2012. That's what Nintendo marketing chief said in an interview yesterday.

That would put it close to matching the record sales figure of 38.2 million, currently held by Sony's PlayStation 2 console. It was Nintendo marketing chief George Harrison who made the recent comments, in an interview with Bloomberg.

"Demand is much greater than we anticipated," Harrison said. "A year ago no one thought we would be in this position."

Harrison promised that Nintendo would strive to solve the crippling stock shortages which have held back sales up to this point. A shortage of consoles has made the Nintendo Wii a hard console to get hold of.

35 million a bold claim

But despite sales being stunted by a shortage of consoles, the Wii is still selling more units than the PlayStation 3 and the Xbox 360 combined.

But analyst Ersuko Tamura said that it's far too early for Nintendo to be making such bold predictions.,

"The 35 million target is a bit too optimistic for now as it seems the Wii is targeting light gamers, but the U.S. market has a lot of hardcore game players," she said. "It's too early to decide whether the Wii will be the winner among game consoles."

Nintendo has currently sold 2.5 million Wii consoles in the States, compared with 5.4 million Xbox 360s and 1.3 million PlayStation 3s.